LEICESTER, England — A maligned monarch found under a parking lot was buried in pomp Thursday, as Britain embraced King Richard III, a long-reviled ruler who is experiencing a remarkable posthumous renaissance.
Royalty, religious leaders and actor Benedict Cumberbatch joined archaeologists, Richard’s distant relatives and curious Britons for a service in Leicester Cathedral that saw the king’s bones buried with dignity, 530 years after his violent death.
“Richard’s posthumous reputation has been less than glorious,” said Gordon Campbell, the University of Leicester’s public orator, with understatement about a man whose name was long a byword for villainy. But now, Campbell said, he has “the greatest following of all English monarchs” apart from Queen Elizabeth II.
The service borrowed from 15th-century rites, with Latin and plainsong amid the more modern hymns. Cumberbatch, who plays Richard III in the BBC’s Shakespearean TV series “The Hollow Crown,” read a poem by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
